"The Chinese cannot be bullied at will any more," he said. "Unlike in the past, we have stood up now."

Staffers at World Journal, a local Chinese-language daily newspaper, were distributing mineral water custom-packaged for the event for free.

"The Olympics is the pride of all Chinese," Lee said. "The Chinese people should unite for an excellent Olympics. The World Journal, as a Chinese language media outlet, should make its due contribution to the Olympics, and speak for its own people."

An exhibition on Tibet's past and present was held on the sidelines of the rally.

One placard showed that the infant mortality rate in Tibet dropped from 430 per thousand in 1951 to only 35 per thousand in 2006 and the region's average life expectancy had increased from 35 to 67 years.

The number of Tibetans enjoying primary education rose from 2 percent in 1951 to 98 percent in 2006.

"It is the cohesiveness of the Chinese nation and the dedication of all China that contributed to the transition of Tibet from an underdeveloped region to one that develops in synch with the whole country," said Huang Yue, a Tsinghua University graduate on an MBA program at Duke.

The rally also attracted the attention of people from non-Chinese communities.

"I love today's event," said Joachim Stroh of Germany. "I really support China, I support the Olympics."

On Cafferty's comments about China, Stroh said: "It's horrible. It's really, really bad for CNN. (It) puts things in such a wrong light, wrong context, he really needs to do a lot more to take his words back, not only apologize, but take some action."

"I think CNN should take some action and do something about those unbelievable (comments)."

Raffaele Abbate, an Italian who works as a managing director at Oxora.com, said he has "told everyone in our company that we can't all go by what the media said."

"We need to know the facts. We need to know the history. We need to know what's really going on," he said.

"Today I am here to represent myself, our company, but more so to represent Westerners, because this controversy has created a misunderstanding for the Chinese people as well as Westerners."

"There are still people who do not know the truth," Abbate said. "We know the benefits the Chinese government has brought to Tibet. We understand the people are better off today than they were 50 years ago."

"And I also understand that it's clear that the nation needs to be united, so when there is a riot, when there is a problem, how else can a government counter a violent riot, with 1.3 billion people?"

Abbate also condemned the "silly attacks" on the Olympic torch, "which has nothing to do with politics, it's only got to do with the spirit of the games."